


Not My Julian

by excessiveprepositionalphrases



Series: One Tiny Lieutenant Cares Deeply About Julian Bashir [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, What if someone actually loved and cared for Julian?, au where someone actually notices the changeling, definitely not a self insert at all ha, fixit, my space self wants to protect julian bashir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22522756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excessiveprepositionalphrases/pseuds/excessiveprepositionalphrases
Summary: Fixit / AU where someone really loves Julian, and spots the changeling right away. I really just wanted to play with the idea of someone actually spotting the changeling, and what that would be like. My nameless self-inserty space OC makes another appearance!
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Original Female Character(s), Odo & Original Female Character(s)
Series: One Tiny Lieutenant Cares Deeply About Julian Bashir [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621273
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	Not My Julian

“So how long is this…what conference, again?”

“Contagious Xeno-Virals.”

“Right. That. How long is this virus conference again?”

Julian shuffled the PADDs in his hands, comparing what I suspected was two drafts of the same paragraph.

“6 days,” he answered, not looking up from the screens.

“What am I meant to do for six days?” I asked, rolling over onto my back on the biobed and hanging my head off the foot of it. Julian finally caught the weight of the conversation, set down the PADDs, and turned his chair to face me.

“It’s less than a week. You’ll be fine! Just don’t hurt yourself, or catch any Bolian viruses.”

I shuddered at the mention. I would have never believed that there could be a flu worse than the human one, until I’d had a run in with the Bolian version.

“How do other planets even have ‘flus’, anyway?” I asked, dragging the conversation off topic. “I mean, that’s something that evolved on earth, right?”

“‘Flu’ is a misnomer. We just call it that because of how ill it makes you feel. It’s no relation to influenza, genetically or conceptually.”

“Learn something new every day. Anyway, that’s not what I meant.”

I rolled back over onto my stomach and rested my chin on my hands.

“Jabara’s here. She’ll do a perfectly wonderful job taking care of me while you’re gone. That’s not the issue.”

“What _is_ the issue, then?”

“Who am I going to talk to?”

Julian’s face shifted through a dozen emotions in the space of a few seconds. He looked taken aback, then sad, affectionate, confused, surprised, affectionate again.

“There’s hundreds of people on this station. I’m sure you’ll find someone to talk to,” he answered softly. He looked, as he often did when anyone said something kind to him, like he was grappling with the concept of kindness. He was one of those people who tried to hide their emotions, but he wasn’t nearly as good at it as he thought. Most people couldn’t read him but I could, even when he didn’t want to be read. It really didn’t take long to learn how, but it took more time than almost anyone spent with him, so he had the false impression that his wholly affected inability to be hurt was a more convincing façade than it really was. I shrugged.

“It won’t be the same,” I protested. Julian smiled. It was a real smile, one of those rare moments when he seemed convinced by a compliment.

“You’ll be fine! Talk to Miles, or Dax. Converse your way through the senior staff while I’m gone. By the time I get back, you’ll have half a dozen new best friends.”

“I will! I absolutely will. I’m still going to miss you, though.”

“Have you turned loose of the Doctor yet?” Major Kira’s voice interrupted our tit-for-tat.

“Never!” I responded playfully. The Major laughed.

“We may have to pry him out of your grasp. Your transport just docked, Doctor.”

“Thank you, Major.”

Kira nodded.

“And to continue our conversation, I’ll miss you too,” Julian said. He stood and held his arms out to me invitingly. I slid off the table and wrapped him in a suffocatingly tight hug.

“What if you just don’t go,” I mumbled, my face buried in his chest.

“I’m the keynote speaker!” he protested with a laugh.

“They’d learn to live without you.”

Julian pulled away enough to look me in the eyes and squeezed my upper arms.

“And so will you!”

“Have fun, Julian,” I acquiesced.

“I’ll do my best. See you in 6 days.”

I nodded and watched him walk away. Kira was still hovering in the doorway, and tilted her head to one side as she studied me.

“He gets invited to speak at conferences all the time. I’ve never seen you so upset about him leaving before.”

“…do you ever just get a bad feeling about something, Major?”

“Constantly, for the last 15 years or so.”

“I’ve got a very bad feeling about this. I don’t know why, but I can’t shake it.”

“You’ll be fine!” she said, almost dismissively.

“It’s not myself I’m worried about.”

“Julian can handle himself. Besides, I don’t think there’s many ways to have things go wrong at a medical conference.”

“I know you’re right. Anyway, get ready to put up with me loitering in Ops for the next several days, Major. Without Julian I’m going to be seeking other people to bug.”

“I’m just glad it’s him that’s gone and not you. Otherwise _he’d_ be looking for other people to talk to.”

“That’s not very nice, Major,” I chastised. Snarking at the first officer was a questionable decision, but the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Kira made one of her faces.

“Oh come on! Even you have to admit that Dr. Bashir is an acquired taste.”

“Maybe, but he certainly didn’t take me long to acquire.”

* * *

Somehow, those six days felt even longer than I had feared. Julian was right – there were plenty of other people to talk to, and I had befriended most of them, but it really wasn’t the same. A lot of them – Dax especially – were actually objectively better conversationalists than Julian was, knowing exactly the right words to say and how to say them and when, and when to talk and when to listen, and how to stop themselves from talking too long about a particular thing. It had been so long since I had really talked to someone who wasn’t Julian that I had forgotten how shallow a well-crafted conversation could feel. It was something I hadn’t noticed before, but Julian had ruined me.

Before I’d met him, I’d never really thought about conversation as a skill, or a sport with rules, beyond knowing that I wasn’t quite a master of it. I’d never thought that the people I talked to were putting effort into their words. It only seemed effortless and free, like conversation was an act without thought. And then I met Julian, and for the first time I could remember I had a conversation with someone other than myself who hadn’t mastered the art. He _didn’t_ always know what to say, or when or how, and he certainly didn’t know when he should stop talking, and he felt _real_. He ruined me, almost in the space of a day, and then I could see the calculation, the thought that went into every word. I could see the math and the framework of every conversation I had, the careful debating of word choice and expression, the crafting that was going on in everyone’s heads. I’d never realized exactly how rare it was that we say what we’re really thinking. And then everyone started to feel just a little artificial, like talking to a shell I couldn’t quite crack. But there was always Julian, no shell to crack because he didn’t know how to build one, no real conversational game to navigate because he didn’t quite know how to play it. I didn’t quite know how to play it either, and it was deeply comforting. Julian was the only person I felt like I could really talk to, and understand, and be understood by. Sometimes he’d look at me with a light in his eyes and tell me he’d made a discovery. Those words were like a warning to get comfortable. Once he got going on a topic there was no stopping him, but it was all fascinating stuff – xenobiology and anatomy and virology and microbiology and genetics. I only understood about half the words but they were great fun to listen to. Maybe I was the only person who cared about microbiology, but the truth was, the topic really didn’t matter. It was Julian’s overwhelming enthusiasm that made what he had to say so interesting.

By the time he returned I hadn’t had anyone info-dump on me in days, and I was beginning to twitch. I didn’t so much step into the infirmary as I fell into it, and brightened immediately at the sight of the tall, thin man, back where he belonged.

“It’s always good when my anxiety is wrong,” I said, by way of a greeting. Julian turned to me and smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. I went in for the hug before he had a chance to invite it and planted my face squarely in his chest. The thought passed my mind that he didn’t quite smell right. Maybe, I considered, that was a creepy thought, but it really was true. He definitely did have a smell, and the strange, heavy, floral-y, cheap-cologne smell that was filling my sinuses wasn’t it. Mostly he should have smelled like the infirmary itself, clean air and antiseptic, fresh and sharp. He more or less lived in the infirmary, so I had always figured the smell must have just seeped into his clothes. He _had_ been gone for almost a week, though, so it _did_ make perfect sense that the ever-present antiseptic smell had finally had a chance to unstick itself from his clothing. So it was perfectly justifiable, I convinced myself. It still felt wrong, though, to press my face into his chest and not have my lungs filled with the smell of purified air and chemicals. I tried to shake it off. It was still a weird thing to notice, and a much weirder thing to be bothered by.

“You were right, I lived. But I missed you,” I said contentedly, my face still pressed into him. He hugged me back, but not quite as tightly as I expected.

“I missed you too,” he responded warmly. There was nothing wrong with the words, but there was something odd in the hug. He just sort of stood there, both arms around me, but mostly unmoving, almost awkward. Julian was usually an animated hugger, with people he really cared about at least. I was expecting to be squeezed and rocked back and forth, but what I got was a sort of awkward, loose, concept of a hug, like someone who had the idea of a hug explained to them but had never actually participated in one. I pulled myself out of the uncomfortable embrace and studied Julian’s face. He looked…blank. It was the right face, the right green eyes, the right nose, but the expression seemed wrong in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

“Are you alright?” I asked suspiciously.

“I’m fine. Tired, certainly, but that’s all.”

“I don’t believe you,” I protested. “You’re doing that thing again where you pretend to be okay and you’re not. I know your face. Something’s wrong.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I assure you, I’m perfectly healthy.”

I eyed him suspiciously; he shook his head dismissively.

“Let it _go_. I’m fine.”

It was almost a snap. Julian didn’t snap.

“…you’re being weird, Julian.”

“I am not!”

“You absolutely, conclusively, unquestionably are.”

He softened his tone.

“Hey. I’m sorry. I must be more tired than I realized. I promise, I’m okay.”

The softer voice made him sound a lot more like the Julian I knew, but the longer I studied his face the surer I became that something really was wrong. There was something twisting in the pit of my stomach, the kind of creeping, unplaceable discomfort you feel when faced with someone who you’re sure you shouldn’t trust, even if you don’t know why. That was not a feeling I was used to associating with Julian.

“Why don’t you…take a couple hours,” I said slowly, trying to disguise that I was backing away from him slightly. “I know you’re tired and you have a lot to go through. I’ll be back later.”

“You can stay!” he scrambled. “You’re not in the way. You’re never in my way.”

“That’s alright. I have a million things I need to be doing,” I desperately tried to justify myself as I turned to leave.

“I’m…sorry I upset you,” Julian said to my back. I turned to face him again. _Wrong_. It was all wrong. The expression, the posture, the mannerisms.

“You’re fine. I just need a couple hours.”

“I’ll see you later, then?”

“Yeah. Yes. I’ll be back.”

Julian gave me a sad nod. I backed out of the infirmary and took a couple slow steps out of eyeshot. As soon as I was safely invisible the slow walk turned into a run, and I slid to a halt in front of Odo’s desk. He looked up from the PADD in his hands in what felt like comic slow motion.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant. You seem to be in quite the hurry.”

“Something’s wrong with Julian.”

Odo raised an eyebrow.

“The last I checked, the Doctor was away at a medical conference.”

“He’s back. As of about an hour ago. And he’s all…weird.”

Odo set down his PADD and leaned in, his face taking on a trademark expression of interest. He was like Sherlock Holmes, hungry for a case.

“Weird how, exactly? I need _details_ , Lieutenant.”

“He’s just…I don’t know. Wrong. His face seems blank. He doesn’t seem…giddy enough, I guess? And he hugged me funny. And kind of snapped at me. I don’t know – I was so happy he was back and I thought he was going to be super happy to see me too but then we had a super weird interaction.”

“I’m sure you did have a weird interaction with Dr. Bashir. We have _all_ had weird interactions with Dr. Bashir. What would you like me to do about it? Arrest the CMO on suspicion of being strange? If being strange was a criminal offense, the doctor would have been in custody long ago.”

“Just go talk to him. Please? Go have a conversation with him, and tell me he doesn’t seem odd to you.”

“Dr. Bashir always seems odd to me, Lieutenant.”

I heaved an annoyed sigh.

“You know what I mean! Odd for him. Not like himself. Please, Odo. If only to soothe my anxiety.”

“Fine,” he acquiesced. “I’ll go talk to him.”

I slunk across the promenade, a few steps behind Odo, and tucked myself in a doorway across from the infirmary to watch the interaction. I didn’t need to hear it. It wasn’t what he said that was the problem. It was the movements, the mannerisms, the expressions, that seemed so wrong. Julian was standing with his hands in his pockets when Odo approached him. He was blank, almost motionless, until he noticed Odo’s presence. It was like a switch flipped, and he greeted the constable warmly, smiling, obviously making small talk with him. It was a very brief conversation, and when it was over, Odo somehow spotted me from across the promenade and joined me in the doorway.

“Well?” I asked. “Do you see what I mean?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, Lieutenant. The doctor seems perfectly like himself to me.”

“He’s got his hands in his pockets” – I waved my hand animatedly in Julian’s direction – “have you ever seen him with his hands in his pockets? He never does that!”

“That’s not a lot to base an accusation like…whatever accusation you’re making on.”

“I don’t know what accusation I’m making. I just know when my best friend isn’t himself.”

Odo paused. He seemed to be nursing a heavy dose of annoyance with me.

“I’ve spoken to him, and he seems perfectly normal to me. If you can find me some real evidence that something’s going on here, I assure you, I will investigate it. But I can’t go around accusing the senior staff of nebulously defined sins without a hint of hard evidence to stand on.”

“I don’t think I can get you proof. I don’t know if proof can exist, for something like this. But I’ll try and get you some more evidence. That’s probably the best I can do.”

I convinced Jadzia to invent a technical problem in her lab to keep me occupied and far away from the infirmary for the rest of the day. I did walk past a couple of times, eyeing the activity inside. I got the impression that Julian wasn’t actually _doing_ anything. He seemed to be puttering around the infirmary, poking at a computer panel every now and then. He had the distinct appearance of a person desperately trying to look busy. I wondered if I had hurt his feelings. The thought crossed my mind that he really was fine, in a technical sense, and maybe just a little tired or sad, and all I’d done was be rude to him. I was still pondering whether I was a terrible human when I folded myself back underneath one of Dax’s misbehaving computer terminals. She interrupted my thoughts from somewhere above me.

“You look awfully thoughtful.”

“Have you ever hurt someone you cared about, Commander?” I asked.

Dax folded her legs underneath her and took a spot on the floor.

“Too many times. What’s this about?”

“It’s complicated. I think I might have been unkind to someone who didn’t deserve it.”

“Is this about Julian?”

I turned my full attention to her.

“How did you know that?”

She got one of those trademark sparkles in her eyes.

“I’ve been around a while. And _you_ are easy to read. Julian’s resilient,” she added. “He’ll get over whatever you said to him.”

“He’s really isn’t. Not at much as he pretends to be. It affects him, you know. The way everyone treats him like he’s annoying.”

“People used to treat Tobin that way. I remember the feeling very clearly. It never seemed to bother Julian, though,” Jadzia mused. “I always respected that about him.”

“It’s a façade. A good one. I think he thinks if he pretends nothing bothers him, he’ll be more accepted.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked. I shrugged.

“He’s not actually that hard to read, if you try. I don’t think anyone ever really tries.”

“You care about him a great deal,” she said softly.

“He understands me. We understand each other. I don’t get that very often. I don’t think he does either.”

“So!? What happened? I find it hard to believe you and Julian actually had a falling out with each other.”

“It wasn’t a falling out,” I corrected. “He’s just acting weird. Not like himself. I tried to call him on it and he kind of snapped at me. Not badly, or anything. It wasn’t that he said anything particularly hurtful. It wasn’t that he said _anything_ hurtful. He barely said anything at all. He was just acting strange, not like the Julian I know. Being around him was making me deeply uncomfortable for no good reason. I just had to get away from him.

“I’ve never felt like that around him before. Sure, plenty of people have creeped me out, but never Julian. He’s always the opposite, with his whole calming energy thing. But when I was talking to him earlier, I couldn’t shake this feeling that I needed to get as far away from him as possible. Something’s wrong with him, Jadzia. I don’t know what it is, but it’s visceral. But now I’m wondering if I was wrong somehow. I don’t know what I suspect him of, anyway. And I was kind of a jerk to him. Again, not really, but we’re both operating on subtext and empathy most of the time. Neither of us actually said anything really hurtful but I think I hurt his feelings. Maybe there’s nothing wrong, technically, maybe he’s just tired or depressed. Imagine, being away from home for a week, and coming back feeling kind of sad, and having someone who’s supposed to be your friend be awful to you on top of that.”

“So?” Jadzia asked, raising her eyebrows. “Go apologize to him! I don’t think Julian tends to hold grudges.”

“I know, but I can’t shake the feeling! It’s…a complex emotion.”

“Well then go talk to him again. Maybe what you need is more data.”

“I think I’d rather sleep on it,” I concluded. “I think it would be better that he sleep on it too.”

* * *

Sleeping on it only made me feel worse. The guilty feeling that I’d been an ass to Julian felt like a lead weight in my stomach, but every time I thought about trying to make up with him, I thought about the weird hug, and the way he seemed to be back and forth across the infirmary like a screensaver, and his weird, blank expression. The stress was starting to make me feel sick. All I wanted to do was talk to Julian, which made it hurt so much more. There was a special, unique pain in your greatest problem being with the person with whom you normally discussed your problems. There was going to be no resolving it without facing it, though, so I had a long, contemplative breakfast, and went to go talk to Julian. The infirmary doors were standing open, as they usually were, and Julian still seemed as if he wasn’t actually doing much of anything. I watched him for a minute, absentmindedly studying a computer panel, before venturing to interact.

“…Julian? Can we talk?”

It was the tone of an apology, if not yet the words. He looked up at me, studied me, looked me up and down with complete obviousness. He looked almost as if he didn’t know who I was for a barely perceptible second. In the sheer interest of assuaging my own crushing guilt I powered through the discomfort that was curling again in my stomach.

“Of course,” Julian responded, quickly and somehow deliberately arranging his face into a warm smile.

“I’m sorry I was kind of…unempathetic yesterday. I hope you’re okay. I didn’t mean to be hurtful, but I think I was. I didn’t mean to run away from you like that.”

“You did exactly the right thing. You caught yourself in the middle of a weird interaction and you got out of it tactfully. And you were right – I was being weird. I’m sorry.”

“Are we good, then?” I asked.

“We’re always good. No matter what happens.”

The words still definitely sounded like Julian, but the tone still felt wrong. That was the whole theme. He looked right but didn’t move right, and used the right words but didn’t say them in the right tone. It was almost as if someone was pretending to be Julian with just enough accuracy to fool the crew, and that they hadn’t expected to need to convince anyone who was actually close to him, and they had absolutely no idea how to do so.

“I’m glad. Worrying about it was starting to make me feel sick,” I added, by way of bait. If this really was Julian, suggesting I was ill should have set him off immediately. The expression that passed across his face, somewhere between affection and something almost predatory, told me it had worked.

“Let me check you over then, before you start crawling through conduits.”

“Only to soothe your concern,” I agreed. The truth was it was entirely to soothe my own concern. I was hatching a plan. What I _hadn’t_ seen Julian do since he returned was actually be a doctor. It was so much of who he was, and he had such a distinctive way of going about it, that I quietly decided this was my litmus test. If Julian the Doctor seemed like Julian the Doctor, that was it. I was just being touchy for no reason. But if there was anything wrong, any hint that this was not the gentle, kind, overcapable Doctor I expected, something would have to be done. The motions of climbing up onto one of biobeds and presenting some limb or other for analysis were so familiar I found myself doing it before Julian had a chance to say a word. I stopped myself. I could have led the whole interaction to the point that any random person would have been able to do a decent job of pretending to be Julian. The last thing I wanted to do was muddy this experiment by giving him even the slightest hint as to how this was supposed to go, so I curbed the urge to try and beat Julian to his standard instructions.

He had a medical tricorder in one hand, hand scanner in the other, and passed the latter slowly over my chest and stomach, carefully studying the readouts. Too carefully, almost, as if he were making a show of it. Tricorder in the right hand, scanner in the left. _He had the devices in the wrong hands_. Sure, there was no “right” way, but there was definitely a standard – everyone I had ever known tended to hold a tricorder in their non-dominant hands, leaving their dominant hands free for interacting with whatever they were scanning, or, in the specific case of a medical tricorder, manipulating the other scanner. The person – who I was suddenly, unshakably sure was not Julian – who was standing in front of me had the devices backwards, tricorder in the right hand and scanner in the left. My own sense of discomfort was one thing, but I was fairly sure no one had ever suddenly become left handed.

“You’re fine,” the man in front of me said brusquely. Not enough fluff. Not enough preamble. That odd floral from before still hung in the air like cheap cologne. Tricorder in the wrong hand. The challenge immediately became slipping out of this interaction and getting as far away from him as possible.

“I figured, but it’s nice to know for sure. I have to go. I promised the chief I’d help him fix some relays.”

I slid off the biobed and made for the door as casually as I could.

“Tell the chief I said hello!” the mystery man called after me.

“I promise I will!” I called back. I was already headed for Odo’s office. He looked almost disappointed to see me walk in.

“Hello again, Lieutenant. Have you come to tell me that Dr. Bashir is acting strange again?”

“I actually have something to go on this time!” I proclaimed triumphantly. Odo reclined back in his chair.

“I’m waiting.”

“He’s left handed. I mean, he’s left handed now. Julian’s not left handed. I don’t care what you think about my suspicions from before, people’s dominant hands don’t just change. I don’t know who’s taken up residence in our infirmary, but that man is not Julian.”

“Now that,” Odo said, standing up and leaning over the desk, “is actual evidence. What’s your theory on this man, then?”

“I don’t know. He looks like Julian – _exactly_ like Julian. Every detail of his face is right. It’s just how he acts that’s wrong. He seems to mostly know what to say, but not quite how to say it. And I get the vibe that he doesn’t really know much about medicine. He knows how to use a medical tricorder but I don’t think it goes much beyond that. I don’t think he’s actually treated anyone since he appeared. I kind of think he’s just trying to look busy.”

“We face a rather inconvenient problem here, in that the person on the station most qualified to help us prove someone is not who they say they are is the very person we’re suspecting.”

“Dax might be able to come up with something. She’s the best scientific mind we’ve got, other than Julian.”

“I have…another idea,” Odo said slowly.

“Which is?” I asked.

“Follow me.”

I followed Odo back to the infirmary.

“Doctor,” he said coldly, by way of an awkward greeting. Not-Julian turned to him and affected that same, fake, warm smile. It felt like it was getting less warm each time I saw him do it.

“Constable. What can I do for you?”

Odo didn’t answer in words. He only stepped forwards, and placed his hand firmly on the other man’s shoulder, and began to shift that hand into its formless state. I gasped as I watched a patch of the shame shifting, pale substance begin to form on what had been the other man’s shoulder.

“Oh…sweet god – I didn’t even consider – ” I whispered.

Odo and the changeling just stared at each other, apparently locked in an emotional stand off. Odo tapped his combadge.

“Odo to Sisko”

“Go ahead, constable.”

“We have a security issue on the promenade. It appears our doctor has been replaced by a changeling.”

“Then _where_ is Dr. Bashir?”

“I wish I knew, Commander” Odo said sadly. I was barely holding it together. The idea that we had a changeling infiltrator was somehow much less upsetting than the realization that Julian – _my_ Julian – was missing. Very probably dead, if the dominion had anything to do with it. I excused myself to the nearest bathroom and curled myself into a small ball to cry. I felt like throwing up. In a few minutes I had gone from vague suspicions to facing down the likely death of the only person I’d every actually felt understood by. It was Jabara that found me in the end. She carried a similar calming energy to Julian’s, and I hugged her tightly.

“If he’s hurt – if he’s – ” I began, unable to finish the sentence aloud.

“I think Julian could give even the Jem’Hadar a decent fight” she reassured me. “They’re already sending shuttles out to look for him. He’ll be back. You wait and see.”

I nodded tearfully. It was a hope I had to hold on to. The alternative was too painful to consider.

I spent every moment of the next few days that I wasn’t working simply hanging out with Jabara in the infirmary. I expected to want to avoid the space entirely, that it would hurt too much. But I quickly found that it was the only place I wanted to be. I wasn’t sure why or what I thought I would get from it, but it seemed to take the edge off the pain somehow. Jabara was an angel of a woman. I had always liked her but I’d never before really realized how wonderful she was. In a few excruciating seconds she had become the most experienced medical officer on the station, and was suddenly in charge of the lives and health of a couple hundred people. She absolutely soared. Watching her care for everyone was healing, and we spent our evenings lying on biobeds and talking about everything. We didn’t talk about Julian very much, but we both thought about him constantly. There was nothing to say only because there was so much to think. Neither of us had to say it. The looks we passed to each other were enough.

We both took to sleeping in the infirmary. I because I found it was the only place I could actually get even a little sleep without feeling immediately panicky and nauseous, and her mostly just to take care of me. I was half asleep on a biobed, hovering somewhere between sleep and an anxious dream, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. My first instinct was that it was Jabara’s – but it definitely wasn’t. It was too large and too heavy, and almost felt like – I opened one eye and glanced down at the hand on my shoulder. The deep tan skin and the cuff with a bluish green stripe around it nearly stopped my heart.

“I assume I’m having a panic dream” I said quietly.

“I assure you,” the familiar voice answered softly, “you’re not.”

I opened both eyes and looked up at the figure hovering over me – and directly into Julian’s face.

“Before I lose it completely – and it’s coming – can you promise me you’re real, because-“

“I know. They told me on the way here. I promise you, it’s really me.”

It sank in all at once that he was real, and there, and not dead, and I threw my arms around his neck. He hugged me close and I buried my face in his neck. He still smelled like antiseptic. _That_ felt right.

“You better promise me,” I said through the tears that were pouring down my cheeks, “that you never plan on going anywhere again.”

Julian laughed and squeezed me tighter. My sniffles quickly turned into full on blubbering.

“Hey – I’m here now! It’s time to be happy!” Julian whispered, but I could hear in his voice that he was crying too. “Odo told me you were the one who actually realized something was wrong. How did you know?”

“I don’t know, honestly. The changeling just felt wrong. There was something off about him that I couldn’t place. He didn’t smell right, either.”

“Should I ask what I’m supposed to smell like?”

“Antiseptic.”

“Doctor!”

The mutual crying had woken Jabara, who was sitting straight up on her own bed, staring at us both. “Everyone’s been so worried about you, Doctor,” she added. “I’m glad you’re okay – if only because I don’t think that one” – she waved towards me – “could survive without you.”

Julian tucked my head under his chin, resting his cheek on top of my head.

“Consider this a promise,” he said softly, “that you’ll never have to learn to.”


End file.
